Finnair Adds A New 7th Freedom Flight To The United States

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Finnair has announced that it plans to base three of its Airbus A350 aircraft at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport this coming winter season and use them to operate three new 7th freedom flights. Two of these flights will be heading to Asia while the third will be crossing the Atlantic to the United States.

Finnair’s Stockholm A350 Flights

Starting in late October, Finnair will launch three new non-stop routes to Bangkok, Phuket, and Miami out of Stockholm Arlanda. As of now, this is what the schedules look like:

Bangkok

Finnair’s new route to Bangkok launches on 22 October and is set to operate 5x/week on the following schedule through to 22 April 2022:

AY147 ARN 23:00 – 14:25+1day BKK (Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri & Sun)
AY148 BKK 22:05 – 05:30+1 day ARN (Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri & Sat)

In the very beginning, this route will not operate on Monday (outbound) or Tuesday (inbound) but the schedule shown above is in place from 27 October.

Phuket

The new non-stop route between Stockholm and Phuket will launch on 24 October and will start out as a once-weekly service (on Sundays). A Thursday service will be added from 4 November and a third weekly flight (on Tuesdays) will operate from 30 November.

This is what the schedule looks like from 1 December:

AY153 ARN 17:35 – 10:30+1 day HKT (Tue, Thu & Sun)
AY154 HKT 12:15 – 18:55 ARN (Mon, Wed & Fri)

This service is currently set to operate through 21 April 2022.

Miami

Finnair already offers a non-stop service between Helsinki and Miami that operates 3x/week during the winter season. From 23 October, Finnair will enhance its offering between Europe and Miami by adding 2 weekly flights from Stockholm (on Wednesdays and Saturdays) before adding a further two weekly Stockholm – Miami flights from 29 November.

This is what the schedule looks like from 1 December:

AY17 ARN 09:35 – 14:10 MIA (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sat)
AY18 MIA 16:40 – 07:40+1 day ARN (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sat)

This service is currently set to operate through 22 April 2022.

Quick Thoughts

It should be noted that Finnair’s plans are almost certainly contingent on the vaccine rollout in the US and Europe continuing to suppress COVID-19 and on the coronavirus not springing any more nasty surprises on the world between now and when the new 7th freedom routes are scheduled to launch – if you’d like to book any of these new routes make sure you’re familiar with Finnair’s coronavirus travel policy.

That word of caution aside, it’s great to see Finnair offering more services to Asia and a new service across the Atlantic. As I’ve mentioned already, all three of the new routes are operated by Finnair’s excellent Airbus A350-900 aircraft which not only offer one of the widest Economy Class seats available (18″) but also offer one of the best Business Class cabins too.

I was fortunate enough to try out the A350’s Business Class cabin on one of its first-ever flights way back in 2015 and the cabin is as good now as it was then…and the onboard service is usually pretty good too (although these routes will be crewed by flight attendants from Airpro and not Finnair so we’ll have to wait and see what the service will be like). Given the choice of aircraft and airline with which to fly to Asia or across the Atlantic, Finnair and its A350 would be very high on my list – that fact that Finnair is part of the oneworld alliance and that its flights can be credited to the American Airlines AAdvantage program and the British Airways Executive Club is a nice added bonus.

Bottom Line

Finnair plans to launch three new routes out of Stockholm this winter season with the airline set to offer non-stop 7th freedom flights to Bangkok, Phuket, and Miami. All three services will be operated by the airline’s Airbus A350 aircraft and will be offered between late October 2021 and late April 2022.